Pentagon to dig into marketing data on citizens

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The type of information that can be legally obtained for a new federal government computer program ranges from political and religious contributions to magazine subscriptions, clothing sizes and even data about prostate problems.

The Pentagon's Terrorism Information Awareness program is being designed to track terrorists, but privacy advocates say it could be misused.

"This now opens the door to wholesale involvement by the Defense Department in domestic evidence gathering on U.S. citizens, and it should be a very frightening prospect to Americans," said Bob Barr, a civil-liberties advocate and former Republican congressman from Georgia.

Almost every conceivable tidbit of personal information is collected and sold by private firms to create behavioral dossiers on millions of consumers so marketers can pitch products to them.

But a loophole created for the data-gathering computer program -- dubbed by critics a "supersleuth" system -- makes that same information fair game for the government.

Civil-liberty advocates say that because there are no laws to govern this relatively new method of data mining, it leaves people vulnerable to gross invasions of privacy and due-process violations.

"Once this information is obtained by the government, the consequences are much greater. Marketers can sell you a widget, but the government can arrest you," said Lara Flint, staff counsel for the Center for Democracy and Technology.

In a congressionally mandated report, officials from the Pentagon's TIA program said it will only collect data for its database that are "legally obtained and usable by the federal government under existing law."

Sen. Ron Wyden, Oregon Democrat and a leading critic of the program, called the language a major loophole to data mine "everything under the sun."